Bill filed which would inform women abortion pill process can be reversed

A state senator has introduced a bill which would require abortion clinics to inform women the effects of the abortion pill can be reversed.

A young woman from California has been brought to testify in favor of the bill.

Rebekah Buell Hagan of Sacramento says she received medication at a California Planned Parenthood abortion clinic, took the initial pill, and nearly immediately felt regret.

“Everything kind of hit me,” Hagan tells reporters during a Capitol news conference. “It was like that foggy lens that I was seeing things through kind of lifted and I thought, ‘Oh, my goodness, what did I just do?’ And it was the kind of grief that I can really only describe as a mother grieving the loss of her very wanted child.”

Hagan says she had taken the initial pill in March of 2013 and was to take the follow-up medication to complete the process the next day. Hagan says she sought a way to reverse the process through the internet and found it. She says she delivered a healthy baby boy a few weeks later.

Hagan says the legislation in Nebraska would provide the information for women who have regrets and want to undue the process.

Sen. Joni Albrecht of Thurston sponsors Legislative Bill 209, which would add a section to the state informed consent law to advise women about the abortion pill reversal process. Albrecht says that in Nebraska, more than half the abortions are so-called “medication” abortions in which a woman takes the abortion pill mifepristone.

Albrecht says pregnant women seeking a medication abortion should be informed that if they change their minds, they can stop the process.

“It’s information only. It would be posted on the website,” Albrecht says. “The doctors, whoever administers that first pill would have to make sure that they go fully through the whole process to let the woman know that she does have a choice if she wants to come back in and stop it from continuing.”